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Chemical Security Solutions

Water facilities and other industry operations that use chemicals in bulk can make changes that improve security as well as improve environmental health risks.

Federal Regulations for Chemical Facilities

2007 -- New federal regulations for chemical facilities neither require nor encourage companies to switch from potentially dangerous chemicals to less hazardous substitutes, and that has some lawmakers and activists worried. New rules released earlier this month for the first time give the government the authority to regulate high-risk plants to ensure they are secured from either accident or attack. Regulators are empowered to impose civil penalties up to $25,000 a day, and even to shut down chemical facilities that fail to comply with the rules.

Industry objects to having the government the tell plants when and where they should convert...

American Chemistry Council's spokesman, Scott Jensen, said industry objects to having the government the tell plants when and where they should convert. He added that forcing alternatives could be cumbersome, expensive, and lead to unintended consequences.

Activists offer the story of the Blue Plains sewage treatment plant in Washington, D.C., as an example of a change to a safer alternative that was accomplished quickly and without excessive additional cost.

Potential Hazards

After the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, plant manager Mike Marcotte could not sleep at night because of the potential hazard posed by several rail cars loaded with chlorine gas sitting at his facility. “They were extremely attractive targets,” he said in an interview. An attack on the tanks could have released a toxic cloud endangering nearly 2 million people.

Plant and Facility Conversions Can be Accelerated

Marcotte decided he needed to move quickly. Having already made plans to replace chlorine gas with liquid bleach within the next few years, he rapidly accelerated those plans. Within 90 days, the conversion was complete.

Construction costs were about $500,000 and subsequent upgrades cost about $15 million. The safer liquid bleach added about 25 cents to the average customer's monthly bill. But it was no longer necessary to have police cars patrolling around the clock, so security costs dropped substantially.

It's not just plants that make chemicals that are potentially hazardous; there are also facilities that use chemicals to produce other products – for example, petroleum refineries may use hydrogen fluoride; power plants may use anhydrous ammonia, and water treatment plants use chlorine and sulfur dioxide gas. All are toxic if inhaled, and they are used in 55 percent of the industrial processes that threaten communities nationwide, according to the environmental group Greenpeace.

Safer Alternatives for Gases

There are widely available safer alternatives for those gases.

The liberal-leaning Center for American Progress, in a 2006 study, said more than 284 facilities in 47 states have converted to safer alternatives since 1999. As a result, the Center said, at least 30 million people no longer live under the threat of a major toxic gas cloud. Some examples:

Nottingham Water Treatment Plant, Cleveland, Ohio, now treats drinking water with bleach instead of chlorine gas.

Since 1999, the Center says, 25 water utilities that formerly received shipments of chlorine gas by rail have switched to safer and more secure options, such as liquid bleach or ultraviolet light. But 37 drinking water and wastewater treatment facilities still receive chlorine gas by rail, leaving 25 million Americans living in harm's way either nearby or in towns along the rail route.

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